Mocaphouse project is permanently outsourced.

1. What is Motion Capture

Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement onto a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications. In filmmaking it refers to recording actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation. When it includes face, fingers and captures subtle expressions, it is often referred to as performance capture.

The procedure

In motion capture sessions, movements of one or more actors are sampled many times per second, although with most techniques (recent developments from Weta use images for 2D motion capture and project into 3D) motion capture records only the movements of the actor, not his/her visual appearance. This animation data is mapped to a 3D model so that the model performs the same actions as the actor. This is comparable to the older technique of rotoscope, such as the 1978 “The Lord of the Rings” animated film where the visual appearance of the motion of an actor was filmed, then the film used as a guide for the frame by frame motion of a hand-drawn animated character.

Camera movements can also be motion captured so that a virtual camera in the scene will pan, tilt, or dolly around the stage driven by a camera operator, while the actor is performing and the motion capture system can capture the camera and props as well as the actor’s performance. This allows the computer generated characters, images and sets, to have the same perspective as the video images from the camera. A computer processes the data and displays the movements of the actor, providing the desired camera positions in terms of objects in the set. Retroactively obtaining camera movement data from the captured footage is known as match moving or camera tracking.

Advantages

Motion capture offers several advantages over traditional computer animation of a 3D model:

More rapid, even real time results can be obtained. In entertainment applications this can reduce the costs of keyframe-based animation. For example: Hand Over

The amount of work does not vary with the complexity or length of the performance to the same degree as when using traditional techniques. This allows many tests to be done with different styles or deliveries.

Complex movement and realistic physical interactions such as secondary motions, weight and exchange of forces can be easily recreated in a physically accurate manner.

The amount of animation data that can be produced within a given time is extremely large when compared to traditional animation techniques. This contributes to both cost effectiveness and meeting production deadlines.

Potential for free software and third party solutions reducing its costs

2. About MocapHouse (ITBackyard) system

MocapHouse has Vicon MX, (16) Vicon F40 camera (4 Megapixels) system with high capture speed and accuracy. Reducing production, post production time and costs. The system can capture up to 2 persons with probs simultaneously.

The same system in use in a wide variety of leading visual effects houses and games companies, including Nintendo, Industrial Light & Magic and Sony, Vicon motion capture systems have been used for over 10 years in production work and it shows – just have a look at the Film & TV credits and the list of games produced using Vicon equipment.

Vicon F40 Camera

Delivering high speed, high accuracy and high data throughput as well as 2D on-board tracking and system-wide Gigabit Ethernet MocapHouse (ITBackyard) is proud to use the F40.

4 MEGAPIXELS

The F40 boasts a resolution of 4 megapixels, captures 10-bit grayscale using 2352 x 1728 pixels and can capture speeds of up to 2,000 frames per second.

370 FPS FULL FRAME

Capable of capturing 370 frames per second at full frame resolution
(4 Megapixels) the MX-F40 delivers a significant performance increase over the
MX-40+. This means you can accurately capture high speed movements such as golf swings for analysis or sport moves for games.

ELECTRONIC FREEZE FRAME SHUTTER

The F40 contains the custom-designed Vicon Vegas CMOS sensor which provides a full frame “true” shutter. Shuttered cameras are tolerant of on-set or laboratory ambient light, so increase your system accuracy. But not all shuttered cameras are the same – rolling shutters routinely found on other CMOS sensors cannot be used for motion capture. To ensure you get the best quality data the F40 offers a true electronic freeze frame shutter. The Vicon Vegas sensor is the first 4 megapixel motion capture sensor to offer a real shutter.

VICON VEGAS SENSOR

The faster full frame, higher throughput and shuttering of the F40 could not have been possible using off-the-shelf sensors. The successful F40 camera uses the Vicon Vegas sensor, purposely built for motion capture.

REMOTE LENS CONTROL

If you are changing the position of your cameras frequently in a multiuse lab or studio, adjusting the focus and aperture is now done easily from the comfort of your chair with the optional remote focus and aperture lens. Vicon hardware and software is designed to extend the F-Series functionality to your computer, giving you greater control during set-up.

VICON LENS

Along with the Avalon and Vegas sensors, the Vicon lens has been custom-built for motion capture. The Vicon lens has a large image circle to ensure that the entire image is evenly illuminated, not just the center. Off-the-shelf C-Mount lenses are designed to work with low resolution cameras and cannot be used with such high resolution cameras because of their limited resolving power; this is especially true with small markers. To achieve this, the Vicon lens was designed with a high resolving power.

Vicon Blade

Vicon Blade is the only package on the market to put all of the crucial elements of motion capture in one integrated environment to ensure what you capture is what you deliver.

The Blade platform is customizable and scalable by virtue of its proven plugin-architecture, command and control infrastructure, and robust HSL scripting language.

KILLER KINEMATIC SOLVING AND RETARGETING

Blade’s completely revamped globally optimizing kinematic solvers provide ruthlessly fast and controllable results that are a perfect representation of the captured performances. When applied to retargeting, these same kinematic solvers provide a fantastic path for getting data on to target skeletons of virtually any topology and dimension.

SCALABLE REAL-TIME AND SYSTEMS

Configure your capture system to meet your needs without fear of overloading the system and short-circuiting your creative requirements. Blade captures both real time 3D data and full resolution 2D camera data used for post processing, so you don’t have to choose between real time and real good.

REAL-TIME 3D

Native 3D rendering and capture lets you keep an eye on all your assets to prove that your captured results look great.